And so they walk.
There is a great crowd of the Witch's people, all around the stone table, many carrying smoky torches. Wolves and ogres and minotaurs and hags and incubuses and wraiths and the spirits of wicked trees and -
"The fool! The fool has come. Bind him fast."
Winter is, by a considerable margin, the first of her creatures to set to this task. It's not that he's less afraid than they are; it's that he doesn't see why that should stop him.
When they start to drag him to the Stone Table with all his paws bound together, the Witch says, "Stop!" and her creatures look to her and she grins wickedly and says, "Let him first be shaved."
Winter doesn't get caught up in the excitement with the rest of them. But when the Queen commands that the lion be shaved, he produces a knife and gets to it, quite carefully and gently so that not a single nick mars the skin under the mane as it falls away.
Pointless. Pointless and repulsive and cruel. But not, yet, injurious. Maybe this is all she wants to do. Maybe this was so irresistable that she'd give up her thread of a claim to James? Bella's holding her breath.
"Muzzle him!" cries the witch.
The creatures snug the cords around his paws. Addenda are made to the mass of them until there's barely any lion left visible.
And the Witch draws a wicked knife and a whetstone and begins to sharpen her blade.